The Shatter Effect
by KiriNoKoe
Summary: The chandelier fell from the ceiling, shattering into a million fragile pieces. Christine fell from naivety, into fragility. There is danger in understanding the truth, even for a moment.


Disclaimer: I don't own "Phantom of the Opera" in any way, shape, or form.

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><p>The world was shattering. The chandelier fell like a glass tear from the soulless insides of the opera house. It's one and only tear. Christine felt the shards hit her like piercing rain driving through her skin. They would be mere scratches on the surface, the wounds were not noteworthy, it was the sensation, and it's companion understanding that were horrifying.<p>

For the first time in her life, she understood perfectly. Perhaps some of the clarity faded after the moment, the revelation was lost in the sea of crystalline slivers, but that impression was tattooed inside of her forever.

Villainy, they tell us, is an act of disobedience to the laws set by mankind. Whether or not those laws are just, are fair, isn't up to us to decide, we follow because not following is villainy. There is no allowance in the nature of mankind for the villainy that slips through it's fingers, the evil that they have no choice but to tolerate. The unkindness of mothers to their macabre sons, the unkindness of childhood friends to their frightened and alone acquaintances.

As they dragged her from the stage her blood boiled in her veins. Screams of terror and desperate cries of "The madman!" or "The monster!" echoed through the halls wildly. It was like a wildfire of emotion had been lit and kindled within the masses thronging for the exit. No one cared to ask WHY he'd dropped the chandelier, no one cared at all.

The world knew no real justice. It was all a fabrication of stories and vain attempts toward glory or self justification piling up like old costumes in the opera house. When had the Phantom's life been fair? Where was the law when HE was the one endangered and forsaken? These people didn't know, and these people didn't care! Yet they felt themselves justified, even righteous, in their hunt for him. The blinding fear of that which is different was driving their rigid society into chaos.

Christine was shattered, numb to the world as she was stuffed into a carriage and taken into all the 'safety' that the world could offer. She knew the truth now, it was too late to save her from it. She was shattered, like the chandelier before her, the pieces of her hit the opera floor and scattered into a million places. Some pieces would be swept up and carried away, others would be replaced into their original locations as if to pretend that there never was such an incident, and the remaining few would be embedded, unseen, unfelt, and unknown in the opera house. Like the ghosts of so many before her, but even more like the Phantom who made her.

What did one owe one's teacher? To what extent was loyalty, familiarity, or even love to be carried? Was there a difference between them, in the end? When what you wanted was not an option anymore, what was the best alternative? Did you take the safest, most sure course? Or did you gamble it all on the hope that there was light at the end of even the longest, darkest tunnel? Who was there to answer such questions, such unwanted, unseemly questions as they were. Who could possibly begin to understand what it was like to want the unwanted, and have it offered to you so willingly...

They bandaged the little wounds on her exterior. The comforting words of people all around her, telling her they were little scratches, they would heal. She stands, long after they're gone, staring deep into oblivion. Her pretty face reflects back from the depths of an oval mirror in a gilded room like a mocking joke. So beautiful...so empty. So cowardly.

There is the word she fears, struggling to repress the idea back into her mind, lest it take on a life and demand recognition. It will permit her to do this for the time being, it's her choice to live with the consequences, but there will come a day, or perhaps a night when it will sleep no longer, and then it's whispers will be screaming, and the falling, shattering descent she has clung to so desperately will end, leaving her in irreparable pieces.

Years will go by while it slumbers, awaiting the perfect moment to reveal itself again. As she lies, drawing her dieing breaths, surrounded by the children of the life she accepted as 'good enough', and the one child of the life she feared, the idea raises it's head and destroys her fragile comfort with one small question.

_ Why is it that people choose to run from that which they want most out of the world?_

She answered aloud with ragged breath. "Because we are afraid of loosing it. " A bittersweet smile swept her face. "Because we are afraid to shatter."

The damning thing is that in the end, you shatter yourself for fear of being broken by someone else.

She could almost feel herself breaking as her breathing stopped, and her life slowly began slipping away. The moon outside illuminated her room as she passed quietly from the world and slipped into the night...Like a phantom.

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><p>This felt a little bit rough...I may rewrite it later...and I may leave it as it is. I hope you enjoyed it either way.<p>

Kiri


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